Hotel Honolulu

Hotel Honolulu Welcome to the Hotel Honolulu a down at the heels tourist place that s two blocks from the beach on a back street in Waikiki where middle America stays and dreams Like the Canterbury pilgrims every

Title: Hotel Honolulu

Author: Paul Theroux

ISBN: 9780618095018

Page: 126

Format: Hardcover

Welcome to the Hotel Honolulu, a down at the heels tourist place that s two blocks from the beach on a back street in Waikiki, where middle America stays and dreams Like the Canterbury pilgrims, every guest in this eighty room hotel has come in search of something sun, love, happiness, unnamable longing and everyone has a story Honeymooners, vacationers, wanderers, mWelcome to the Hotel Honolulu, a down at the heels tourist place that s two blocks from the beach on a back street in Waikiki, where middle America stays and dreams Like the Canterbury pilgrims, every guest in this eighty room hotel has come in search of something sun, love, happiness, unnamable longing and everyone has a story Honeymooners, vacationers, wanderers, mythomaniacs, soldiers, and families all land at the Hotel Honolulu But the hotel is as suited to being a crime scene as a love nest Fortunately, our keen eyed narrator, a writer down on his luck, is there to relate all the comings and goings He s lost money, friends, house, and family, and he has no experience running a hotel But all that doesn t stop Buddy, the bloated, boozy hotel owner the last of a dying breed from signing him on as manager It isn t long before the hotel expands to encompass the narrator s whole world His original plan of escape from a life of the mind becomes something altogether different a way to return to the world he left, the world of imagined life No one but Paul Theroux could write this romp of a book, with its acutely drawn characters and canny insights into a place that is often viewed as a simple island paradise In this unforgettable novel, Theroux shows us a funny, languid, louche floating world, island style This is the essence of Hawaii as it has never been depicted, and it is also the heart of America.

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About "Paul Theroux"

Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is The Great Railway Bazaar 1975 , a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then back across Russia to his point of origin Although perhaps best known as a travel writer, Theroux has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast.

469 Comments

I started out really enjoying this book with its colorful locale and offbeat characters. The protagonist is a stranger coming to grips with a strange land--a middle-aged writer from the mainland who leaves behind his family and old life to start over in obscurity in Hawaii and ends up managing a second-rate hotel. The stories he tells about the people he encounters are by turns funny and tragic, and often a little twisted, which was good. Then they became really twisted, and then ultimately quit [...]

Two real issues here: repetitiveness and the ladies.See, Paul Theroux had a great idea here: 1 story per room for the dissipated Hotel Honolulu. The problem, though, was that he maybe didn't actually have 88 separate stories to write about it. Instead, we get a half-dozen stories relating to women who were once sexually abused and then became prostitutes, another three or four of Buddy Hamsa telling not-quite-true stories about his sexual exploits, and a couple based entirely on dialect. While M [...]

I strongly disliked this book. It chronicles a middle-aged mainlander's career as the manager of a lower-status Honolulu hotel and is written in as a series of artificially short, episodic "just so" stories. The only characters who were not made intentionally repulsive were pretentious and annoying. Locals were described as stupid and mute so often by characters that it was hard for the reader to draw any other conclusion. My admiration for this author’s other works compelled me to finish this [...]

I had to force myself to finish this book just so I could write a review and give it a rating. Ugh. There's only so much I can read about the sex, scandal, rumors, etc. of boring people. Another reviewer noted that this reads too much like a middle-aged man's masturbatory fantasy with sordid sex stories, older men dominating younger women (generally white men w/ younger women of color), murder, mystery, etc. Not only that, but the portrayal of the locals in Hawaii was somewhat insulting. All the [...]

"seedy""flawed""really twisted, and then ultimately quite perverse""disturbing""self-described (or narrator-described, alternately) coconut princess beach bunnies" (referring Theroux's description of women)"over-sexualized misadventures with some seriously unappealing people""don't bother if you think you'll be getting any insight into local Hawaiian culture, the people, the history, etc"These are just a few quotes from the reviews about this book that can be found on this site. And yes, I say! [...]

Paul Theroux at is caustic best. The narrator is a disenchanted writer who is the manager of a vintage hotel in Waikiki with topless hula contests and bleary- eyed clientele in the Paradise Lost bar. A semi- retired hooker who is the mother of the “young, fresh” Hawaiian he marries lives on the third floor. The owner of the hotel is a self-indulgent blowhard given to sadistic tricks on his relatives who happens to be a millionaire. The cast of outrageous characters goes on with sad pinch lin [...]

I picked up this book for 2 reasons; 1 is I love Paul Theroux, 2 is I lived in Hawaii for 10 years and being a mainlander didn't appreciate living in Wahee until I read Hotel Honolulu. This book is the true Hawaii, at least the Honolulu-Waikiki Hawaii, and Hotel Honolulu is any number of small hotels off the beach side of Kalakaua Avenue. I actually think I drank in the Paradise Bar many times and definitely knew people in this book. For a taste of the real Honolulu read Hotel Honolulu as Paul T [...]

So, I picked up this book, thinking, well, I'm not expecting too much from this, since it's written by a Haole, who is not from the Islands, but it could be interesting. The premise was promising, and I happened to have another book by the author on my shelf, strangely, but also unread. So, I picked it up. I was pleasantly surprised by the writing, and the stories drew me in, but that was just schadenfreude on my part, I do believe. I like the way the author writes; he has good flow and the hote [...]

This book is often described as a modern-day Canterbury Tales, evidently because it's a collection of travelers' stories and there's a hotel involved. Other than that, it's a meaningless comparison.The unnamed narrator of Hotel Honolulu is a once successful novelist who, no longer writing, has taken a job as the general manager of a second-class hotel located a few blocks from Waikiki Beach. Married to Sweetie, a hapa haole hotel maid, he's the father of young Rose and the son-in-law of the hote [...]

Read mainly during a stint scoring Hawaii Math at one of the country's top education testing facilities, Paul Theroux's Hotel Honolulu provided a nice counterpoint to the terribly misguided papers I was reading for 8 hours a day.I am contractually bound to keep my scoring gigs confidential, so I'll say no more. Suffice to say that after this particular gig, it was readily apparent to me that Hawaiian students--much like Texan students--are either very poorly educated or simply don't bother to pe [...]

Richly, positively, unpleasantly scabrous in its detail of lives in and around a Waikiki hotel - just an avalanche of lustrated noise. There are 80 short chapters here, mostly intertwined short stories with a couple of longer strings on a few key characters, including the narrator, who is alarmingly similar to Theroux himself. Includes riffs on such unpalatable topics as older men with "coconut princesses" and other unhealthy obsessions. Many of the characters are repetitive, some of the stories [...]

I really like Paul Theroux's style of writing-his characters are, on the surface, equal parts successful, boastful, satisfied with their state in life, but underneath it all, there seems to be an uncertainty, a deep unhappiness and unrequited desire that begs to be satiated in a foreign place, free of leering eyes and judgements. I find it interesting that he picked Hawaii, as it stands in people's minds as a placid, if non-eventful, paradise on earth. A largess of natural beauty but devoid of c [...]

The conceit: a disillusioned writer (who incidentally shares many historical facts with the author) moves to Hawaii and takes on managing a small Waikiki hotel that has seen better days. Each chapter relates a story about a guest or staff member. Theroux is often cynical and his characterizations can be blunt, cartoonish, and unflattering. Yet the individuals come alive and it’s not hard to see Theroux’s underlying compassion for everyone, himself included. From my experience (eleven years i [...]

I tried to get through this book, but I ended up putting it down with about 100 pages to go. I felt like I was forcing myself to read. The characters were stereotypical and the chapters seemed to be written for shock value more than anything else.

Great book! This is a review of the audio edition. I was immediately attracted to the concept: blocked writer, new life as manager of Hotel Honolulu filled with a cast of characters. After reading some of the reviews I wasn't sure that it would be my cup of tea maybe raunchy.I do not know what those other reviewers are talking about. This book is amazing! I am sure that I will read it again just to revisit this crazy group of people and hang out. The narrator of the audio edition is AWESOMELY ta [...]

I sometimes find Theroux's writing annoying but not this time - highly recommend Hotel Honolulu for its insights on the characters who live in this B-Hotel in Honolulu that the writer appears to be managing but, as he points out, really manages him. Here is a review by a better writer than I:''Hotel Honolulu,'' Theroux's new novel, deals with the theme of the near other in a different way. Inhabiting an alter ego with suspiciously familiar biographical markings, Theroux pulls certain of his prev [...]

Theroux is one of my favourite writers, let's get that out there. His fiction is best when dispassionately observing the human condition. I loved the premise of the book, writer who is suffering from writer's block or maybe just doesn't want to write anymore, escapes from the 'mainland' to Hawaii and takes a low paid job as the hotel manager sure that nobody will have read or be interested in his body of work. The novel tells the story of the hotel, staff, current and past residents. Characters [...]

Paul Theroux's Hotel Honolulu (2001) is a curious novel for several reasons. First of all, his novels are often hit or miss for me-but I enjoyed this novel for it's liveliness and insights filtered through the Theroux-like doppelganger narrator (a common device in Theroux novels) who divorces and moves to Hawaii to start over and ends up managing a third rate hotel in Waikiki. This manager, a former writer (we never learn his name) who recounts the stories of the people he encounters as the mang [...]

Theroux is a favorite author: O-Zone. This book reads like a collection of short stories, centered around guests, employees, the owner and visitors to a B-class Honolulu hotel. The stories are dark, funny, fascinating at times, and really have something for everyone. My personal fave was "Brudda Iz," about, who else? Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, who was a "calabash cousin" of the hotel janitor. Really delightful except I get sick of authors who perpetuate the stories of old farts who marry young women [...]

Normally I can stomach Paul Theroux's curmudgeonliness, but not in this case. Okay, well, I read most of the book - the stories do grab your attention! Paul Theroux has some seriously crazy sexual fantasies. But ultimately, the entertaining sexual anecdotes got old, Paul Theroux got too racist, and 2/3rd of the way through the book, I was not invested in the characters like I am with a good book. So I left it in the airbnb in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city where some pour soul might just be bored eno [...]

I like the characters, the description, and the individual threads. The whole doesn’t really come together though, it’s mainly a thin excuse to be able to have all the threads, as if the author couldn’t commit to one book. It’s a very white vision of the place too, which fits who is telling the story but wasn’t quite what I hoped to get. Still good, but it seemed a bit lazy in some places. Probably just me, but that’s what I’ve got.

Entertaining stories, but disliked the way Mr. Theroux often denigrates the locals and local culture (e.g. his opinion of pidgin) yet at the same time fetishizes the "island woman" as beautiful and desirable (albeit empty-headed). As a fan of Theroux's travel writing I was a little disappointed with this book.

Finished this book on the beach & instead of hurling it into the ocean much like Pat hurled A Farewell to Arms through the window of his parents' attic window in Silver Linings Playbook, I banished it to the share-a-book bin at the beachside hotel where we were Labor-daying. Now it's someone else's albatross. Best Wishes. ❤️ Ash

Paul Theroux has written an A+ novel. I swear I thought it was non-fiction! A lonely writer who has given up on writing comes to Hawaii (Wayee) and finds a job as a hotel manager. We meet the staff, the guests, and friends. Parts are funny, parts are melancholy. You have to read it.

Amusing overlong view of Hawaii and Hawaiians- saysIn this wickedly satiric romp, Paul Theroux captures the essence of Hawaii as it has never been depicted. The novel's narrator, a down-on-his-luck writer, escapes to Waikiki and soon finds himself the manager of the Hotel Honolulu, a low-rent establishment a few blocks off the beach. Honeymooners, vacationers, wanderers, mythomaniacs, soldiers, and families all check in to the hotel. Like the Canterbury pilgrims, every guest has come in search o [...]